Major industrial portfolio trades hands

A Houston-based real estate investment firm with holdings in major energy centers across the United States has sold a 2.4 million-square-foot portfolio of 75 industrial buildings for $295 million.

The properties are heavily focused in markets driven by the energy industry. More than 80 percent of the buildings are in Texas, including 24 in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and eight in greater Houston. The others are in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico, North Dakota’s Bakken region, western Pennsylvania and Ohio, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, which represented Mesa in property sale.

The buyer was a a group led by New York-based American Realty Capital Properties.

The properties are fully leased single-tenant buildings, and more than 70 percent of them have remaining lease terms of 10 years or more.

“We assembled these properties over a 2 ½-year period through build-to-suit development and sale-leaseback transactions with strong energy service companies,” Mesa’s co-managing partner and president, Tim Horan, said in a statement. “The resulting portfolio is believed to be the largest of its kind in the country.”

In 2011, Horan, a real estate attorney launched Mesa to acquire properties with ties to the energy sector. By the fall of that year, the company had acquired 28 properties leased to tenants in the shale regions across North America. He had raised $100 million from investors, including Philip Burguieres, John Huff, energy investment bank PPHB, Palmetto Partners and B-29 Investments, a private investment firm owned by John and Steve Schmitz of Gainesville.

JLL international director John Huguenard and senior vice president Sean Devaney negotiated the transaction on behalf of Mesa.